Burn It To The Ground
by Kagetora no Tsume
Summary: Evil!Wanda AU for a prompt: Wanda's not interested in redeeming herself or helping others, as much as she is in getting revenge and staying out of prison. So she takes the invitation to join the Avengers, and uses it to destroy the people she blames for the destruction of her homeland and her brother's death. Rating subject to change as chapters go on. Major character deaths.
1. Chapter 1

Prologue:

It was well after midnight.

The old wooden boards in the hallway of the little farmhouse creaked under her weight as she made her way through the sleeping household, careful to keep her movements silent.

Wanda had been staying with the Barton family for two weeks now, following the destruction of her homeland in the fight against Ultron, and her brother's death.

She was still bitterly upset that her twin hadn't survived the battle, her lust for revenge tempered only by her current helplessness. She had grabbed the very essence of Pietro's being into herself as she'd felt the bullets tear through him, focusing all of her magic on keeping him there with her, and every passing day that her grip on the shreds of his soul grew weaker, she got more and more desperate for some solution to save him.

Just this evening, however, as she'd been lying in bed waiting for sleep, it had finally come to her.

The door at the end of the hall opened without a sound when she pushed on it.

Wanda slipped into the dark room, her powers ensuring that the Barton couple remained soundly asleep as she padded up to the bedside and gently laid her hand on Laura's rounded belly.

A little push was all it took to transfer the fading scraps of Pietro's soul into the baby that was forming beneath her hands, and Wanda leaned close to peck a kiss to the slight deformity of a foot pressing against Laura's stomach from the inside.

"Soon, Pietro," she whispered. "You will be back soon. We'll be together again. Do not worry...big sister will take care of things until then."

"Neither of the adults stirred as she slipped back out into the hall and softly closed the door over before creeping back to her own room, her mind feeling more calm.

It had worked, his soul had taken to the new body.

Her brother would be safe.

Now...

Now, she could focus on getting her revenge.


	2. Chapter 2

Wanda Maximoff did not forget.

She had not forgotten how Tony Stark had taken her parents from her, how the Avengers had taken her brother from her, how they'd destroyed her country.

Wanda did not forget when she'd been hurt.

But she also did not forget kindness.

The warm smile of an older woman as she offered the recently-orphaned twins a bag of potatoes off her market cart, free of charge, had ensured a rather generous donation of money once they had the means and the power to obtain such a thing.

The gentle assurance of Dr. Strucker that they would be okay before they entered a room with forty people for an experiment and walked out three weeks later with only each other had earned the man their protection until he had been killed.

Recently, the undeserved trust of Captain America when she asked for his help to stop Ultron had earned the super soldier her favor.

After all, Wanda did not forget kindness.

Which was why the Captain was the first to die.

There could be no forgiving him, because what he and his country had done was something that she could not forgive, but she did not intend to be cruel about his death.

She had decided immediately that she wasn't going to make him watch his friends die around him, so she had targeted him first.

It had been relatively quick, and she hoped for his sake that it hadn't been too painful.

It was almost laughable how easy it had been.

They had been in Germany, fighting. Steve's side versus Stark's side, a conflict that she'd been feeding from the inside for weeks now.

She had begun as soon as she arrived at the compound for the first time, preying on fears and insecurities, driving wedges between friendships, encouraging distrust. She was on a timer, after all. She only had a few months before Laura's due date.

Tempers were reaching a lovely simmer around her, but not doing much more than that, so she had decided to up the ante. Her powers had "gotten out of her control" one of the times Tony was over to visit, and she showed Tony a glimpse of Steve's knowledge.

The knowledge that his parents had been intentionally killed in the supposed "car accident" that had been blamed for their deaths.

As before, with Ultron, she merely had to stand back and watch as Stark leapt down the path to self-destruction, shunning the others and going on a borderline-psychopathic manhunt for the party responsible. A manhunt that eventually resulted in one Bucky Barnes being dug out of hiding.

That, of course, got Steve involved.

Tony had argued that the man was a danger, and needed to be put down. Steve wanted to rehabilitate him from his abuse at the hands of HYDRA.

A few little pushes of her magic (and a memory or two dragged up while people were sleeping) had been enough to make everyone pick a side: kill Bucky, or protect him.

Sam, of course, had sided with Steve, as well as Clint, who apparently had bad previous experience with brainwashing and sympathized with Bucky greatly.

Wanda felt a little for Bucky, having been subject to HYDRA's experimentation herself, so she had sided with the Captain to protect him. Which conveniently also sided her against Stark.

Vision and Rhody, unsurprisingly, sided with Tony.

Natasha, it seemed, had history with the man in question, so she'd decided to stay neutral on the matter, but Wanda caught the Widow alone one afternoon and dragged a few memories up from the depths of her troubled mind, and the next morning Natasha announced that Stark was right, and Bucky needed to be locked away.

With the battle lines drawn, Wanda's stage had been set.

Regardless of Steve's arguments, Bucky had been arrested, imprisoned, and slated for a rather one-sided trial that would land him in a high-security prison that Tony called The Raft - safely locked up for the rest of his days.

Steve, however, had devised a rather elaborate breakout plan to help get Bucky out before his trial, and had called in the help of one of Sam's acquaintances - master thief Scott Lang - to make that happen. Wanda had cheerfully tagged along, lending help where it was needed as she waited for the inevitable confrontation, and making sure that no one on the outside got involved to stop them. (If she had wound up putting Nick Fury in the hospital in order to do so, well... she wasn't about to cry over that.)

Steve had set up a connecting flight for them, one that would take him and the Winter Soldier off to some distant African kingdom where it was said they had the most advanced medical technology the world had to offer. There, they would see if they could get HYDRA out of his head.

One prison break and a wild goose chase through Europe later, they were all on the final scramble for the connecting flight at an airport in Germany, before they could drop off the radar somewhere in the jungles of Wakanda.

And just as Wanda had planned, Tony Stark had showed up in time to shut down their jet.

From there she had simply sat back and watched as the Avengers began fighting one another.

But unfortunately, things hadn't gone quite as planned. They'd all been using non-lethal force.

There had been a lot of punches thrown, and a lot of property damage, but very little accomplished, and Wanda had been starting to think her plan might have been a bust - all that work for nothing - but then Stark had gone for her, and unlike the others, he had been using live ammo.

The idiot.

It had been a simple matter of angles - she'd shifted the tilt of her force field, and instead of absorbing the shot, her powers had deflected it toward the Captain.

The repulsor beam had left a hole clear through Steve Roger's chest.

It had taken everyone a long second to register what had happened, but then they were all crying Steve's name in horror and running to where his body had hit the ground.

There hadn't been any blood.

Wanda remembered thinking about how strange it was, as she'd shouted the fallen Captain's name and run for his side. She supposed the heat of the blast had cauterized the wound when it punched through him, but she hadn't gotten time to speculate.

She'd had an act to perform.

When the others had all gathered and Sam had made the final call, his hands trembling as he'd brushed Steve's eyes closed and soothed the Captain's horrified expression into something more resembling sleep, Wanda had been quick to burst into tears.

She had sobbed that she was sorry, that it was all her fault, that she'd just been defending herself and hadn't intended for anyone to get hurt, and Clint had very firmly told her that she'd done nothing wrong as he'd hugged her to his chest and shot a murderous glare at Stark.

A glare that had been reflected by most of the others.

Stark had been quiet, shell-shocked and horrified and looking sick as he stared at their fallen leader.

And Wanda had _reveled_ in it.

The trip back to the States had been silent, save for a few quiet sniffles or soft sighs. The shock of Steve's death had been enough to stop the fighting, unfortunately. Even Tony had gave up his manhunt in the face of the Captain's passing, agreeing that Bucky should go to Wakanda and get help like Steve had wanted, as a final parting gift of sorts.

But when Sam had muttered "too little, too late," no one had disagreed.


	3. Chapter 3

Stark released a statement to the public when they got back, saying that there had been an equipment malfunction that had resulted in the Captain's death while they were on a training mission overseas, and assuring the public that the Avengers and the United States were planning the biggest, most patriotic funeral that money could buy to honor the fallen hero.

Wanda had slipped a piece of paper to a hungry-eyed reporter on the edge of the crowd, ensuring that the _real_ story was what hit headlines the following day, Tony Stark's face plastered across the front pages that announced Steve's untimely death.

She was never sure if the papers got back to him, as the man had locked himself away in his lab for the next two days as a "coping mechanism" while the funeral was planned, but the others saw the paper. And, more importantly, so did the American public.

Wanda simply kept her head down and helped Clint check if any of the local florists could get a hold of twelve dozen red, white, and blue flowers by the end of the week.

News of Steve Roger's death reached one Peggy Carter - apparently an old sweetheart of Steve's from the war - who reportedly died shortly after. The two were buried together in a rather touching ceremony, and Wanda had allowed herself to hold on to Clint's hand through the service as he offered her comfort that she pretended to need.

Thor had even returned from Asgard for the ceremony, but a moment of time alone together with her before he left ensured that the man remembered no reason to return to Earth - his memory of everyone he knew on this planet wiped completely from his mind.

Bucky had left after that as well, shipped off to get help with little hope or reason to come back.

Defeated, the Avengers had slunk back to the compound to hide from the world and drink away their sorrows.


	4. Chapter 4

For a long week after, the Avengers hung around the compound like ghosts, the Captain's death a painful reminder that they were mortal after all. That they could be hurt, and killed.

But now Wanda had to be careful.

She'd planted the little seeds of distrust, but with Steve's death, the others had gotten nervous. The distrust had spread. And now even she was getting suspicious looks.

Most of them were easy enough to quell with a trusting smile or a few wide-eyed blinks. After all, they all thought her a child still.

None of them realized that the child within her had died the same moment her parents had.

Wanda spent a few days flitting around the tower, earning back everyone's trust and getting them to let their guard down around her as she planned her next move.

She didn't get very far.

A bomb going off outside of Stark Tower a few days later had them all up and at arms once again.

FRIDAY tracked it back to a man named Helmut Zemo, apparently one of her countrymen, who had lost his family in the battle with Ultron and wanted to destroy the Avengers. The AI couldn't pinpoint his location, however, and so the team was left sniffing after cold leads until he reared his head again.

When he next made his presence known, it was as a video recording broadcast on the world news station. He was holding a meeting of the UN hostage with a bomb big enough to level the block, and giving the Avengers an ultimatum to either hand themselves over in the next twelve hours or sentence every one of the world's UN envoys to death.

Tony and Sam had managed to cooperate for long enough to come up with a plan, one that involved them claiming that they were going to turn themselves over to the man while a few of the lesser-known team went in undercover and took him out.

Namely, Vision, Scott, and Wanda.

The team stood outside UN building, listening to Zemo's instructions via video feed, as Wanda and the two other members of their strike team were sent inside to find him.

She'd been the first to make it to the room where the man was holding out.

Vision may have been able to phase through walls faster than she could force open locks or tear out doors, but she could feel Zemo's mind - the scream for revenge an echo of her own - coming from one of the underground floors where he'd mounted false windows on the walls to throw them off the trail.

He hadn't been happy to see her, needless to say, but a simple energy field to prevent him from reaching the bomb rendered him helpless. He'd shouted about destroying the Avengers, that he would kill Tony Stark and the rest of them for what happened in Sokovia.

A wave of her hand snapped Zemo's neck.

She didn't have the patience for interference in her plans, and _nobody_ was going to take the kill that was rightfully hers.

If Stark was going to die, it would be at her hands. No one else's.

She'd delivered the man's body to the others with a story about the horrible accident that had taken his life before she could arrest him, and they'd all assured her that she could have done nothing to prevent it as she fixed a stricken look on her face and nodded.

They'd returned to the compound, mission successful, and Wanda had ensured that the team didn't get all buddy-buddy again by downing a few shots of Vodka and "drunkenly" bringing up Steve's absence.

Stark was quick to retreat from the room after that.

Most of the others followed shortly after, leaving her alone with Vision and Clint, and she had blinked up at the pair innocently for a long moment before slurring "Did I say something wrong?"

The archer had simply let out a long sigh, kissed her forehead, and asked Vision to see to it that she made it to bed without tripping over her own feet.

The android had picked her up and carried her back to her room, tucking her gently into bed as requested, but he couldn't hide the suspicion in his gaze as he watched her from the doorway for a long moment afterward.

Wanda made a note of it, and then drifted off to sleep with a little smile on her face.


	5. Chapter 5

Killing Vision really was a shame.

He had been innocent of most of her grudge, having been created only a month or so ago, but he was becoming a problem.

Despite his general naiveté, he was far too clever for his own good. He was catching on to her.

Which is why, on a mission in South America when the two of them had been separated from the rest of the group, she had killed him.

It hadn't been easy - Vision had picked up on what she was trying to do the second she severed their communication with the rest of the team, and had easily overpowered her and thrown her aside before she'd been able to land a strike, his strength something she couldn't match. She'd fought back, of course, but he had been keeping her too far away for her to do any real damage, so in a last-ditch effort she'd simply thrown the fight.

Wanda had let her shield drop long enough for him to swoop in close and pin her back against the wall, his hand around her throat and a fraction from suffocating her.

He'd demanded to know what game she was playing at, threatening to turn her over to the others as a traitor if she didn't explain herself.

She had let tears flood her eyes, choking out his name in pleading, and the poor creature - unsure how to counteract the affection he had for her - had let his guard down just long enough for her to wrap him in her powers and tear the gem from his forehead.

She'd watched as his eyes went dull, feeling a little swirl of some dark emotion that might have been regret as the synth's last breath escaped his body in a gentle sigh, and hadn't moved a muscle as he collapsed at her feet.

It was almost an hour before the Avengers came to find them.

A little push from her powers was enough to convince the others that the crushed glass she cupped in her hands was the gem, shattered beyond repair, while the real gem sat heavy and warm against her breast.

This time, the tears she cried over her lost teammate were not all faked.

The funeral for Vision was nowhere near as extravagant as Steve's - mostly just the Avengers and a few close friends from SHIELD. They'd buried the android beside the little headstone for Pietro out behind the compound, and Wanda had spent days out there "guarding it" against Stark trying to salvage parts or programming from the fallen synth.

The man had of course denied that he would even consider such a thing when she brought it up, but that didn't stop the suspicious looks that the others gave him when the mind-reader of the group didn't trust his word on it.

Tony vanished off to his lab, the others brooded around the compound, and Wanda...Wanda started making plans.

With Vision out of the way, things were much simpler. The others didn't know her well enough to catch her bluffs, and Clint - the only one that did - was still feeling so guilty over her brother's sacrifice that he threw his support behind Wanda regardless of whether or not she was in the right.

It was now that she began picking off the rest of them.


	6. Chapter 6

Natasha was easy enough to finish off.

A well-timed wave of energy in the middle of a fight was all it took to send her off the roof of a building and crashing fifteen stories to the concrete below.

The doctors said she was dead on impact, clean break of the neck.

(Wanda had done the best she could to comfort Clint as he sat in the assassin's empty bedroom back in the compound and murmured over and over to himself "she couldn't have made a mistake like that. She couldn't have.")

Sam and Rhody were actually a convenient two-for-one, a couple weeks later.

Sam had caught a stray bullet mid-flight as they battled a HYDRA cell, and had gone into a tailspin behind enemy lines as his wings malfunctioned. Rhody had swooped in, lighting up the front line of HYDRA gunners with a few well-placed rockets, and had managed to grab hold of Sam before he hit the ground, carrying the man back to the safety of the others.

It would have been the perfect rescue...if Wanda hadn't used her powers to short out Rhody's suit.

A few bullet rounds later the two men were dead on the ground, and Tony was howling Rhody's name as he set off round after round of missiles toward the enemy.

(For days afterward, Tony sat in his lab, taking apart the War Machine suit and putting it back together, muttering over and over "I don't understand, where did I go wrong?")

Scott retired from the Avengers fairly soon after that, saying that the whole 'saving the world' thing was far too dangerous for him, and that he was going back to his family to live the quiet life.

And then there were only three: Herself, Tony, and Clint.

Clint she'd always had mixed feelings on.

He had been a pretty good ally, all things considered. He had tracked her down after the Ultron fight and taken her onto the jet with them, personally bandaging her wounds and drying her tears and making sure that she was going to be okay.

He'd also taken her to his home, giving her the little spare room at the end of the hall to call her own and welcoming her into his family as if she'd been his daughter. He'd stood by her faithfully since her twin's sacrifice, and had always sought to offer her comfort when she was upset.

She wanted to hate him.

If it weren't for him, Pietro would still be alive.

On the other hand, her brother had chosen to sacrifice himself for this man, which meant that he had thought him worth giving up his life for.

It hurt her a bit to think about - the fact that Pietro had decided that sparing this man's life was worth leaving her all alone - but she would respect her brother's sacrifice. Clint would live.

She simply had to get him out of the way.

She had been debating faking his death: sending him back to his family with his mind wiped and making Tony think he'd gone down on a mission. Unfortunately, a plan like that had an awful lot of loose ends, not the least of which was the media, and she was in the middle of trying to sort those out when she got lucky as hell.

She also got one of the biggest scares of her life.

Clint received a text one morning that Laura was going into labor.

A month early.

The man had been on a jet before anyone really knew what was going on, and Wanda was left to pace the compound, terrified that the baby - and her brother's spirit along with it - was going to die.

Thankfully, by the evening, they got word that everything was okay. Laura had gone into premature labor from too much time on her feet, but after some medications to stop the contractions and a lot of fussing by Clint, everything had been okay again. Laura had been put on bed rest for a week, and everyone was doing just fine.

Clint, however, said he would not be returning to the compound. He was going to stay with Laura until his son was born.

It was perfect.

At long last, Stark was hers, and there was no one to stop her.

Before Wanda could turn her attention to Tony, however, a wrench was thrown in her plans.


	7. Chapter 7

Bruce showed up out of the woodwork one day, saying he'd seen the deaths of the others and had come back to stay, so Tony wouldn't be too lonely.

Wanda had wanted to scream.

It was karma, she supposed, for the luck she'd had with Clint, but she would work with this. She still had a month before Laura was due.

She could get rid of Banner in that time.

Banner himself wasn't an issue, of course. He didn't know hand-to-hand, he was slow and weak compared to the other Avengers, and he certainly didn't walk around the compound on high alert like Tony did. If she wanted to, she could corner him alone and overpower him without blinking an eye. But Banner wasn't the only one she had to worry about.

The big one was a problem.

As a human, he was perfectly vulnerable. But as the monster? He could not be hurt. From the stories she'd heard and the thoughts she'd read, his human form could not even be harmed without the monster intervening and reversing the damage. And the last time she'd attempted to render the creature comatose with a nightmare vision he'd gone on a rampage instead.

So she'd gotten creative.

There was a part of his thoughts that seemed to trigger the monster. A little bit of poking around in his head while he was unaware, and later a few attempts to intentionally try to set him off, revealed that if she could keep him from losing control over that, she could keep him trapped in human form.

She'd waited until he was sleeping before sneaking into his room and threading a wisp of crimson into his head, poking around until she found the beast.

Making sure she had a stranglehold on his control over the monster, Wanda covered the man's mouth with her hands to keep him quiet, and allowed herself a little smile as she used her powers to stop his heart.

Bruce jerked beneath her, his eyes snapping open, but a second later they rolled back in his head as he passed out, his body going into cardiac arrest. She was honestly a little surprised at how quickly he was rendered unconscious, however she didn't dare release her hold on the monster until almost an hour later - long after his body had expired and his mind had wisped away into smoke.

Only once he was good and dead did she skip back to her bedroom, sleeping peacefully until Tony's anguished cry woke her the next morning.

Seeing the last of the Avengers and one of his closest friends die was too much for Stark.

The man was at the end of his rope, which she loved, but he had also gotten more and more clingy with each death among the Avengers.

She wound up spending the morning after with Tony hovering around her, as if making sure that she would not die as well.

The fool.

The following days were a familiar pattern of "buy flowers, arrange a service, pick a cemetery plot, iron out the black clothing," and so forth. Wanda was busy with her own plans, however.

And as Tony planned Bruce's funeral, she plotted his.


	8. Chapter 8

She had saved Tony for last, of course. She wanted him to see all of his friends die around him so he could have a taste of what she'd had to go through all her life before she killed him. Her revenge on him, however, she had started first. Long before the others were disposed of.

Little things like bank accounts and pin numbers had been easy enough to dig out of his head while he slept, and things like wills had been easy enough to influence his alteration on.

As it was, she - as the sole remaining Avenger - stood to inherit not only the man's property, but half of his fortune as well. The other half was to be sent to Sokovia, to help the recovery effort there.

His reputation had been a breeze to ruin: the man had practically done all of the work himself.

Alcoholism, mental instability, a penchant for violence and recklessness, and no moral compass to speak of. The news lapped these details up like they were starving, taking the tiniest lead and mushrooming it into a devastating story that never failed to have the public giving Tony Stark cautious, hateful glances.

"The Man Who Tried To Start World War III - For Cash!" was still her favorite headline, the photoshopped image of Tony holding Cap's blood-streaked shield like a trophy displayed proudly at the top of the page, "Stark Industries" stamped across the white star.

She'd specifically brought copies of that news print into the compound, just to see his horrified reaction and quick destruction of the paper when he found it lying on the coffee table.

He'd tried to sue the news companies for that, but no lawyers would take his case, and Tony was quick to give up trying.

He had taken to building more suits, as if trying to replace his missing teammates with imaginary friends, and Wanda was happy to sit in his lab and listen as he explained how the AI worked.

Especially when it meant that she could sneak down there at night and experiment with taking it over.

It turned out that the intelligence was arranged closely enough to Ultron and Vision that she could use her powers to control them, much like she did to human targets. She could control the programs' actions and words, and even, it seemed, their loyalty.

Tony's old girlfriend had dropped by the tower one evening, to check on how things were going, and report on the company, and to ask Tony to stop making more of the suits to alleviate his guilt, because she didn't think that it was healthy or safe.

Which made it all the sweeter when Wanda took over one of the hollow suits and used it to shoot the woman, her voice echoing through the AI and claiming her to be an intruder. Tony had scrambled to shut it down, but with Wanda ultimately in control, there was nothing he could do.

She'd been sure to use the suit to assure him that he was safe now as he cradled the unfortunate woman's body in shock and abject horror.

Pepper Potts having such an unfortunate encounter with one of the Iron-Legion-gone-rogue had left Tony barely able to cope, and he'd torn all of the suits apart that evening, not stopping until all that was left was a pile of scrap metal and a neat stack of circuit boards.

It was then - with all of his loved ones gone and with his only potential defenses out of the way - that Wanda finally took her moment and struck.


	9. Chapter 9

( **Author's Note:** I should probably warn for gore 'cause this gets a bit bloody. And to the one Anon who left the comment about Tony being saved last-minute...? I don't think you're gonna like this chapter.)

* * *

Wanda took a long moment to look herself over in the mirror.

She had put on the little floral dress that she'd worn in Sokovia, when Strucker had first released her and Pietro to the world to prevent them from being taken captive, the warm red shawl draped around her shoulders and hooked over her arms. It was one of the only things from her old life that she still had, from her life before pretending to join the Avengers.

The same outfit she'd been wearing when she'd started Tony Stark's long, drawn-out demise.

She supposed that there was probably something poetic to be said for her choice, but she saw it more as the final step in finishing her unfinished business from so long ago. She was finally done playing games.

Wanda made her way downstairs to Tony's lab, unlocking the door with a wave of her hand.

The man didn't look up from his work as she entered, and Wanda took a slow breath before reaching out toward him with her powers.

A little push was all it took to be inside his mind, and from there finding his pain sensors was as easy as poking at him until he cried out.

She watched with a little smile as the man spasmed, falling off the stool he was perched on, before he scrambled around to look up at her in dawning horror.

"Wanda...?" he whispered, a little curl of hurt, of _betrayal_ , in his tone, and she gave him a sweet smile.

"Hello, Tony."

And then she slammed her powers into his pain sensors with all her might.

Wanda stood at the edge of the lab, watching Tony scream and writhe on the floor, clutching desperately at his head.

"Boss?" FRIDAY asked in distress, but a sharp flick of Wanda's fingers fizzled the AI into static.

None of Stark's creations would be coming to save him from her.

She picked her way over to him slowly, keeping him writhing in agony until she was barely a pace away before releasing her hold on him.

Tony lay sprawled on the ground, gasping for breath and clutching at his chest as she hooked a foot around one of the rolling chairs and spun it over beside him, the wheels stopping when they hit his spine.

"Wanda, what-" he wheezed, a hand reached up to her in pleading. "What are you doing?"

"Me?" she asked innocently, blinking big eyes down at him for a long second before she allowed her lips to curl in a wicked smile. "I'm finally getting even."

She slammed her powers into his pain receptors again, leaving him howling in agony as she darted a curious glance around the workshop. The place was usually a disaster, but it looked like a tornado had blown through, the man having torn most of it apart in a fit of despair after she'd killed his ex with his own machines.

Taking a moment to smooth imaginary wrinkles from her dress, Wanda finally released her hold on him, letting the man collapse boneless and gasping to the tile.

"Why-?" he choked out, coughing.

"Not so fun when the tables are turned, is it?" she asked, planting her foot on him and giving him a shove, flopping him over onto his side. "When you are the one being hurt for a change, instead of doing the hurting, and being praised for it?"

She collected her powers around her fingertips, twirling her hand to condense it before tossing it down, letting the force of her magic splinter one of the man's ribs.

His resulting scream was choked with agony, and he curled up like a bug at her feet, clutching at his side.

She watched him until he had mostly stilled once more, feeling her long-repressed fury bubbling back to the surface.

"Where are your weapons to save you now, Stark?" she spat, sending another burst of power to fracture another rib.

He cried out again, his body thrashing, and Wanda took a step back to avoid his flailing limbs. For a long moment he grabbed at his sides, howling for FRIDAY to help, but was quick to realize that the AI would not be coming to save him.

He stilled once more, his breath coming in rough wheezes, and Wanda leaned over, weaving her fingers through his dark locks.

"Do you remember, Tony Stark?" she hissed, dragging his head up by his hair so that he was forced to meet her gaze. The man was foaming at the mouth, the froth tinged pink with blood. "Do you remember building the bomb that destroyed my life? The one that took away everything I held dear? Or was it just one in a litany of others used on innocents so that you could make your fortune and live in luxury?"

He gurgled some reply, and Wanda let his head drop roughly back to the ground. With a wave of her hands, her powers circled him, pinning him to the floor where he practically knelt at her feet.

"I knew of Howard Stark," she said with a casual shrug, curling her wrist to crush him more firmly to the tile and reveling in the fury that flashed in his eyes at the mention of his father. She planned on hitting this man - this _creature_ \- everywhere that it hurt. "He was known across the globe. A genius. Philanthropist. The man who wanted to lead the charge into the future, until the war took him prisoner for his mind. Steve used to speak fondly of him, when you were not around to be offended," she explained, pacing a slow circle around Tony as she tightened her grip and he gasped in pain. "Said how all the man ever wanted to do was create things to make people's lives better, how he hated being forced to make weapons. How _disappointed_ he would be to find that his son has turned what was once innovation and hope into merchandised death."

She stopped in front of him, using the toe of her boot to force him to meet her gaze.

"You are a pale shadow of your father's genius. All you've ever done was reinvent his ideas for your own use and credit, trying to demonize the man whose shadow you could never escape, and not caring who you hurt in order to do so. Your fortune is built on the blood of innocents," she spat, digging her powers into his head and twisting, _crushing_ , wringing agony from him like a sponge. "Innocents like me and my brother, whose lives you destroyed. And for that, I'm going to make sure you _suffer_."

She circled around him again, looking down in contempt.

"Do you know how long I was trapped in the rubble of my home, Stark?" she asked conversationally, crossing to the chair that she'd drawn over and lowering herself into it before kicking her heels up to rest on Tony's back like he was a footstool.

"Two days."

The man writhed a bit beneath her, but a little twist of her foot sent the heel of her boot digging into his ribs and he quickly stilled.

"I was trapped beneath the rubble of my home for two days, Stark. Forty-eight hours without food, without water...with barely enough air to breathe, or space to move."

A twist of her fingers drew another agonized cry from the man, and Wanda gave him another little kick for good measure.

"Did you know that one of the boards from the roof had hit me in the head when it fell?" she asked, chipping absently at her black nail polish. "Neither Pietro nor I could reach to stop the bleeding, so for hours I lay with blood dripping over my face and into my eyes. Stinging. Blinding me on one side, so I could not see my brother."

Another deft twitch of her hands, and Tony hollered as she tore a matching wound open on his head.

The man thrashed against her hold for a long second but her powers didn't waver, and eventually he went still once more, moaning quietly and too winded to fight.

"That really only left two things for me to look at until I was rescued," she informed him. "Did you realize that?"

She made a few sharp movements with her hands when he refused to answer, leaving him howling in agony as she put pressure on his organs, his bones, his brain, just short of rupturing anything.

"For two entire days, I was forced to look at either your bomb, waiting for it to kill me, or the bodies of my parents, broken in the rubble below us. Needless to say, I chose to look at the bomb."

She gave him a moment to catch his breath, letting her powers dart across her fingertips in anticipation.

Once he was no longer gasping, she shoved his face against the floor with her foot.

"You've failed at many things, Mister Stark," she said, feeling the man flinch beneath her. "The shell that landed beside me and my brother was one of those things you failed at."

She dug through his memories with her powers, finding the memory of Rhody's suit shorting out and bringing it to the forefront of Tony's mind. His shuddering sob of breath sent a sick little thrill of joy curling up through her chest.

"I did not know it at the time, of course," she shrugged. "I was only ten. I did not know anything about the mechanisms within the shell that could malfunction or render it inert. The only thing we knew at the time was that our death was sitting barely a foot away, waiting to send us to the same mass grave as our parents."

Wanda coiled her powers around Tony's neck, tightening her hold until she heard his breathing stop. For a long moment she simply watched as his eyes bulged, his fingers tensing up against her power's hold on him helplessly as his face began to redden.

"Every effort to rescue us, the bricks would shift, and more rubble would fall. The dust would choke us..." she said quietly, listening to Tony wheeze in her hold. "And with every shift I would think 'this is it. This will set it off...' But it never did."

She dug the heel of her boot into his spine once more, earning a soundless twitch from the man.

"There was writing on that shell, Stark. A single word."

Tony gurgled out little sound, and Wanda released her hold on his throat, allowing the man to choke down air for a few seconds before she flicked her fingers again, dragging his arms out before him. She took a second to re-position her feet a bit higher on his spine, savoring his little moan.

"I did not know much English at the time," she shrugged, snapping a bone in the man's arm with the flick of a wrist and waiting till his scream had died down before continuing. "But I had two days to sound it out. Since then the word has haunted my nightmares. It was so stuck in my head, so _ingrained_ , that the first time I heard it mentioned on the news, I was able to figure out who was responsible."

A delicate twist of her fingers split the flesh open across his cheeks as neatly as if she'd slashed him with a knife, and his choking cry of horror was quickly garbled with blood.

"An American weapons tycoon by the name of Tony Stark."

The man beneath her feet shifted, gurgling out a plea, but she cut him off with another sharp kick. She had no interest in his false apologies.

"Of course, by then the world was singing your praises as a hero. They didn't care what you'd done before, who you'd hurt. All of your victims had been swept under the rug so that America could flaunt their new philosopher billionaire about, patting themselves on the back," she spat, working her way across his hands, one finger at a time, breaking bone after every few words.

The man's mouth was open in a silent scream of agony, and it wasn't until she had snapped the last finger and given him a few seconds that he got out a strangled _shriek_.

She patiently waited for the noise to die down again, tapping her foot against his spine.

For a long moment she let the silence hang, interrupted only by the sobbing breath of the man beneath her feet, as she debated where to strike next. He was sweating now, in pain and fear, the smell rank as it drifted up to her, and she curled her lip in distaste as she sat up straighter in her chair.

"Do you know the smell of death, Stark?" she asked, letting a thread of crimson weave around her fingers before plunging it into his skull and conjuring up his memory of the scent from driving past road kill, ratcheting up the intensity so that it was strong enough to swamp out his other senses.

"I had nothing but that smell in my nose, burned into my memory, _seared_ into my very lungs the whole time I was trapped. Even now I can still smell it - it never really goes away. It comes back with every nightmare, every recalled memory, every glance at your... _creations._ "

Wanda sent a glare at a pile of scrap armor nearby, and a moment later it started to rattle, slowly shaking itself apart as she reduced it to dust before his eyes.

"Most people associate that smell with something unpleasant they find in a trap, or along the side of the road. The smell of rotting flesh," she shrugged, listening to Tony choke and gasp for fresh air as she forced his brain to register nothing but that scent. "But that's not what I think of when I smell it," she said leadingly, giving Tony another prod. "Whenever I smell it, all I can see are the slowly rotting bodies of my mother and father, dead at your hands."

Tony gurgled out another plea, and Wanda stepped _hard_ on his shattered fingers, letting his howl of agony soothe her memories into the back of her head once more.

"That is something that won't ever go away, Stark. One more thing you've done to me that I'm going to have to live with for the rest of my life. So, for the rest of your rather short and miserable life, I'm going to make you suffer like you've never thought possible."

Wanda twisted her fingers, using her powers to wrench the man's arms back over his head until his shoulders dislocated with a pair of sharp pops. She dropped his limp and useless limbs back to the floor, jostling all of the broken bones in his fingers and arms, and waited for his yelling to die down before dragging his head up by a handful of his hair once again.

"Now, Tony Stark, you finally pay for your sins."

Wanda let his head drop, smirking when his jaw hit the floor with a thud and the sharp clack of teeth. With a sigh, she relaxed back into the chair once more, returning her attention to her chipping nail polish as Tony choked out an agonized sob at her feet.

"Do you remember what I showed you, when we first crossed paths?" Wanda asked casually.

Tony let out a garbled little sound that she really couldn't tell if it was an affirmation or denial, so she gave him a mental refresher that left him pale and breathing hard.

"Seems a bit familiar? Perhaps hauntingly so, hm?" she asked, letting her hands fall to the armrests of the chair. "I showed you what was supposed to be your greatest fear."

Wanda leaned forward in the chair once more, looking down at Stark in contempt.

"But it wasn't that your teammates would be hurt or killed that worried you. No, Mr. Stark, you didn't care enough about the rest of them to worry about their wellbeing..." she slowly turned a red-hot stare on him, her magic pulsing through his veins as she debated where to strike next. "Your nightmare was that it was your fault, and that you would have to live with that guilt."

A twist of her fingers wrenched his head back, his throat straining at the pressure she was putting on it from the angle.

"Feeling bad is not something that Tony Stark does," she growled. "Guilt is an emotion that you fear because your whole life, you have never been made to regret anything."

A little movement conjured a blaze of scarlet to her fingers, and she grinned at the terror she saw shining in his eyes.

"Not anymore."

Tony screeched as she slammed her magic into his head, threading through his thoughts, choking out all of the happiness in there with pain, sadness, dread, and _guilt_. She dragged up every dark secret, every little trauma, every _fear_ , and forced him to face it, all at once. Everything his money had let him live his life ignoring...now he could no longer run away.

After a long moment Wanda released her hold on him, allowing his head to fall back forward, blood seeping from his parted lips to pool beneath him from where he'd bitten his tongue.

"Do you regret it now, Tony Stark? Do you regret making your fortune with the blood of children?"

Stark gurgled out some helpless sound in reply, and she let a wicked grin spread across her face.

Wanda slipped off the chair to kneel at Tony's side in one fluid movement, careful not to touch the filth that covered the ground.

"Back in Sokovia, I gave you a vision," she said, snapping the bone in one of his legs with a sharp jerk of motion, watching him scream and convulse. She repeated the move on his other leg, leaving the limbs twisted and limp beneath him as she carded her fingers through his hair, gathering up a firm handful. She wrenched his head back once more, grinning at the gurgling cough he choked out, gagging on his own blood.

"I gave you a vision of your team, dead by your own hands," she whispered in his ear. "And now...look around."

She did so herself, glancing around the lab with an exaggerated movement as Tony tried to hang his head in despair, but Wanda wouldn't let him, her fingers fisted firmly in his hair.

"I don't see anyone left, do you?"

She gave him a little shake, her voice dropping to a vicious hiss.

"You killed Steve Rogers. Your programming failed, and Vision died because of it. Your negligence caused Natasha to fall to her death. Your suit's failure caused the deaths of Rhody and Sam. Banner trusted his health to your care, and his heart failed him because of the drugs you'd given. Your suit killed Pepper. You have caused the deaths of _all_ those you held dearest, Stark. They would all be alive right now if it wasn't for _you_."

The man let out a shuddering sob, his body shaking as it tried to cope with the pain, and Wanda spat on him in disgust.

"As if you ever actually cared about anyone besides yourself."

Wanda got to her feet, using her powers to haul Tony upright and forcing him to balance on broken legs as he screamed incomprehensible sounds in pain. She held him upright for a long second before simply tossing him to the ground, jostling broken bones and putting pressure on weakened organs. Another wave of her hands had him upright once more, and she tightened her hold a little as he flailed mindlessly to escape her grip.

"There is no one left to see the great Tony Stark fall," she snarled, slamming him into the floor again. "Not that any of them would have cared."

Tony howled in agony as she strung him up spreadeagle before her, her powers blazing at his wrists and ankles.

"Certainly not if they'd known the kind of monster you really are. How _vile_ you truly are inside."

With a sharp motion, she laced her powers into his torso, concentrating them just below his ribs, and then yanked them back, bursting his stomach open so that the intestines were free to fall out, slithering in a blood-red heap onto the tile.

She held him suspended for a long moment, convulsing and dripping blood, as she watched his eyes roll back in his head. A little wave of her hand forced the man back to consciousness, and she carefully wove her way through the gore-covered tiles to stand right before him.

"This is my revenge on you," she said, tipping his bloody chin up with a fingertip. "For my parents. For my brother. For my country."

She stepped back, releasing her power's hold on him, and the man landed in a heap on the floor with a wet splat.

"Now, Tony Stark," she said calmly, eyes running over his twitching, bloody, _distorted_ body. "Now...You die alone."

The man remained silent.

Wanda stood and watched until his muscles had ceased their spasms, until his wheezing breath failed in his throat. Until his agonized, guilt-plagued mind was nothing more than a faint memory.

Until there was nothing left of the great Tony Stark but a bloody pile of scrap meat on the floor.

For a long while after, she continued to stare, letting it sink in that she'd finally done it. She'd finally avenged her parents' needless deaths and her brother's murder. She'd finally sent that damned Tony Stark to his grave, on the heels of all of those who stood to back him.

She'd finally won.

Taking a slow breath, she allowed herself a smile. A real smile, for what felt like the first time in ages.

It was over. She'd won.

Now all that was left to do was return to her brother's side.

"FRIDAY," Wanda called as she turned and strolled out of the lab, a cheerful little spring in her step.

"Yes, Miss Maximoff?" the AI replied, her processors humming a dull red glow in the background as Wanda shot a disgusted look back into the blood-splattered workshop.

"Make sure his corpse is properly disposed of."

"Yes, Ma'am."


	10. Chapter 10

Wanda had turned up on Clint Barton's doorstep a week before Laura was due, a pair of suitcases in her hands and a backpack over her shoulder, carrying everything in the world that was dear to her.

"The compound isn't the same without everyone," she'd said quietly. "Can I stay until the baby is born?"

Clint had invited her in without even questioning how she'd arrived.

Now, as Wanda slipped out of bed and quietly dodged around her half-unpacked bags to sneak into the hallway, she was practically giddy with excitement.

The final step in her plan took place tonight.

After so long plotting and scheming and working to get her revenge and scrap what little of her family she had back together, it was all finally about to come to fruition. She just had a couple final little details to take care of.

Padding quietly down the hallway as she had so many long months ago, Wanda slipped into Clint and Laura's room without a sound, moving to stand at the side of the bed. For a long moment she watched the sleeping couple, a wicked little smile curling her lips as she leaned close and reached a hand out over each of them.

A little wave of her fingers and a burst of magic was all it took to be in their thoughts, and from there it was easy enough to erase the Avengers.

Clint would remember being alone on the mission in Sokovia, where she and her brother had saved him at the expense of Pietro's life.

He wouldn't have to mourn the deaths of his friends, because he didn't know that they existed as anything more than famous figures on the television.

The only strange woman that Laura would remember Clint bringing home was Wanda.

Neither of them would think of the Avengers as anything other than celebrities.

Wanda paused to press a little kiss to Laura's belly, murmuring "sweet dreams, Pietro," to her brother before slipping back out into the hall.

On her way back to her room, Wanda stopped to erase the memory of Natasha from the children's minds as well - so they would not have to know the sadness of losing someone dear to them.

Only the joy at having their new Aunt Wanda in their lives.

That done, she slipped back into her room and nestled herself into the soft, warm blankets of her bed, drifting off to sleep with a little smile.

For the first time since Stark's awful bomb had torn her life apart nearly ten years ago, Wanda felt like she could finally be at peace.

That night, the nightmares did not return.

Wanda slept like a baby.


	11. Chapter 11

_Epilogue:_

"Wanda, Cooper, Lila," Laura called, standing in the back door with the baby on her hip. "Dinner! Come wash up!"

"Coming, Mom!" the two younger children chorused, and Wanda smiled as she let them pull her to her feet, pausing to dust the grass from her jeans and straighten the dandelion crown Lila had woven her as the children ran toward the house.

She followed the two at a more sedate pace, taking in the beautiful countryside around her as the setting sun cast everything into gold light and long shadows. Little fireflies were darting through the air, flashing as the children ran through the long grass, disturbing them, and Wanda smiled as one flew past her. The air was cooler now, refreshing after the blazing summer day they'd had, and she took a deep breath as she headed for the house, taking in the warm green scent of the grass, the sharp prickling scent of pine, and the hazy smoke of the fire pit smoldering.

Lila and Cooper were already inside by the time Wanda reached the little steps up to the back door of the house, and Laura gave her a gentle smile as she climbed them.

"Hope they didn't tire you out too bad," Laura said.

"Not at all. They are little angels," Wanda grinned.

She took her baby brother from Laura's arms when she reached the door, and the older woman leaned close to give her a gentle peck on the forehead.

"You are a blessing, Wanda. I don't know what I'd do without you."

Wanda just smiled back at her, bouncing little Pietro Wade Barton on her hip as he cooed in delight and grabbed for her hair.

"I'm just happy to have a family again."

"And we're happy to have you as part of ours," Laura smiled.

"Be happy inside, food's getting cold," Clint called from the table, drawing a bright laugh from Wanda.

"Coming, _Papa_ ," she called, her accent causing the baby to let out a happy little shriek. Wanda pressed a kiss to the infant's white-blonde hair as she followed Laura inside, a grin spreading across her face.

This...

This right here...

This was an ending she could live with.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Thanks for reading, and please leave a review so I know how I'm doing!

If you liked this story, and you're in the Breath of the Wild fandom, you can come check out the fic that I'm editing/co-authoring: "Calamity Link" by ZeroTech. (Can be found on either FF or AO3, just google the title.)

Thanks again!


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